Using public laundry... It's a very long time ago but I remember that atmosphere, sometimes I talked to other people there or read magazines they had lying around or took my own book to read!!
I saw them for the first time in West Virginia in the summer 2016!! It was freaking surreal, the noise, the smell of dead ones, you'd imagine they made some places slippery to walk on!! They look very intimidating but were very harmless!!
As if "Shopify, Instagram, TikTok" are any better.. They are also fiefdoms and unless you are platformed by any of these big lords, you kinda don't exist (digitally at least).. In a way, I am kinda glad much of humanity still prefer running on pen and paper and cash and refuses to sell itself to computers.
"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East".
Started reading it before the current crisis, but it's only more relevant now. Kinda dense with too many "characters" and events.